NAACP Works to Save Life of Troy Anthony Davis

December 31, 1969

Civil rights organization asks members
and supporters to petition Governor for redress

Troy Anthony Davis, 40, is set to be executed in the state of
Georgia despite his strong claim of innocence. He was
sentenced to death for the murder of Savannah, Georgia police
officer Mark Allen MacPhail on questionable eyewitness
testimony. Seven out of nine witnesses have recanted or
contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found, and no
physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The NAACP is calling on
members and supporters to send letters and emails through its
website or individually to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue asking him
to commute Davis’s sentence. The courts are refusing to
consider the new evidence despite the overwhelming amount of facts
that indicate that Mr. Davis, an African American man, is
innocent.

“Governor Perdue must act quickly and decisively to prevent Troy
Anthony Davis, a young African American man, from being executed
for a crime he did not commit,” stated NAACP President and CEO
Benjamin Todd Jealous. “Georgia is no exception to the rest
of the country. All over the nation, we have witnessed
scores of persons wrongfully sentenced to death. And
far too often, African American men are overrepresented in their
ranks. The preponderance of evidence in Troy Anthony Davis’s
case points to his innocence. Justice requires that we not
turn a blind eye to killing an innocent man - a travesty that can
never be rectified. We must join together to raise our
voice in a clarion call to Georgia Governor Perdue to stop this
injustice and save Troy Anthony Davis’s life. ” Jealous
said.

Tuesday, May 19th is Global Troy Anthony Davis Day, coordinated
by Amnesty International, during which people from around the world
will press for the commutation of Davis’s sentence.

Racism continues to characterize the use of the death penalty in
the United States. Nearly 60 percent of all inmates on
federal death row are racial or ethnic minorities. While
whites represent approximately 50 percent of murder victims in the
U.S., they represent a disproportionate 80 percent of the murder
victims for which current death row inmates have been
sentenced. Critics say this raises the question of whether,
in the aggregate, the judicial system places a higher value on the
lives of white victims. The United States is one of only a
few countries – China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – that still sanctions
the murder of its prisoners.

“This practice of executing Americans is not only morally wrong
but makes no common sense,” states Jealous. It costs millions
of dollars more to execute someone than it does for them to spend
life in prison. This is money that could be better spent
investigating homicide cases and solving crime. We must end
our country’s barbaric practice that is now disfavored by most
nations in the world,” said Jealous.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest
civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United
States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in
their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring
equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.